But television’s most popular liberal and the Senate’s most outspoken conservative share a common cause when it comes to one thing: unrelenting criticism of the Internal Revenue Service for targeting conservative and Tea Party groups for heightened scrutiny. (Should we say “enhanced interrogation”?)

“So unlike much of the Benghazi inquiry, this seems like a genuine scandal,” Stewart said on his Monday show.

In a five-minute riff on the IRS scandal, Stewart even played a tape of Cruz warning of government overreach if gun background checks were expanded.

But instead of ridiculing Cruz — as he is wont to do — Stewart noted that the IRS scandal now gives Cruz and his conservative allies the political high ground against the federal government.

The IRS political retaliation, Stewart said, badly damages President Obama because it “removed the last arrow in your pro-governance quiver: skepticism about your opponents.”

That’s where Cruz comes in.

Stewart: “Gun control. Why can’t we have background checks?”

Roll tape.

Cruz: “I believe it would put us inexorably on the path to a national gun registry.”

“Oh, right,” Stewart said, with feigned ridicule. “A national gun registry. And the government is going to overreach and there’s going to be a registry. And the government’s even capable of that kind of overreach. And they’re going to take your guns away from you.”

Cut to a CBS news report: “The Internal Revenue Service admitted today that some of its employees targeted conservative political groups.”

“Mother****ers,” cried Stewart. “This has, in one seismic moment, shifted the burden of proof from the tin-foil-behatted [conservatives] to the government.”

Though visibly angered, Stewart did find a bit of levity in an IRS official’s apology for the misconduct.